Nick Saban vs. Dan Mullen on spread offenses

Is Dan Mullen the diet version of Lane Kiffin? Probably not, but he ran his mouth a little at SEC Football Media Days yesterday when informed of Nick Saban’s fairly innocuous comment.

Saban praised the spread offense’s success in college, but added that running it can hinder a player’s NFL readiness.
“I’m not going to knock him,” Mullen (5 career wins) said of Saban (124 career wins, 2 championships). But then he did.

“I don’t know his personal record,” Mullen said. Turns out he does.

“I’ve coached the spread offense and I have a lot of more first-round quarterbacks drafted than he has in his career as head coach. Develop them for the NFL? I don’t know. In the last six years, I’ve had two of mine get drafted in the first round.”

Those two, I assume, are Alex Smith and Tim Tebow. Tebow is a month away from his first NFL snap and Smith has mainly proven adept at throwing picks, getting sacked and fumbling in his five years with San Francisco.

Mullen is correct that Saban’s NFL quarterback record is unspectacular, but Saban’s not the one bragging.

Earlier in the day, when Saban was asked if college football is trending toward the pro-style offense and away from the spread, he said the spread is very difficult to defend, but the fundamentals of it do not always translate well to the NFL.

“Being a little bit of a pro background guy, we’ve always tried to sort of pattern our systems out of how we could best develop guys to be able to do that,” Saban said. “The spread offense, some of the things that are being done offensively in college football, is very challenging and very difficult to defend … so this is in no way a criticism of that style of offense.

“But I do think it’s more difficult for the people in the NFL — which is really not our issue as college coaches — to sometimes evaluate players: a left tackle that never gets in a three-point stance, a quarterback who never takes a snap under center, a runner that never gets the ball with is shoulders pointed down parallel to the line of scrimmage.”